Michelle Montebello
The Quarantine Station
Michelle Montebello
Copyright 2019 Michelle Montebello
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, real people, and real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, organizations or places is entirely coincidental.
All rights are reserved. This book is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author. All songs, song titles, and lyrics contained in this book are the property of the respective songwriters and copyright holders.
Please note that Michelle Montebello is an Australian author and British English spelling has been used in this novel.
ISBN: 978-0-9876416-0-1
Editing by Lynne Stringer at Australian eBook Publisher
Book design by Swish Design & Editing
Cover design by Kris Dallas Design
Cover Image Copyright 2019
All rights reserved
To Joanne.
My sister and friend.
This book is for you.
Grief is the price we pay for love.
~ Queen Elizabeth II
While this story is largely based at the Quarantine Station, a site located on Sydney’s North Head, the characters, storyline, some events in time and certain aspects of the station are fictitious and drawn from imagination.
Dedication
A Note From The Author
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Author’s Note
Sources
Acknowledgements
Connect With Me Online
About the Author
Emma
Present
The call came after midnight.
Its ring pierced the quiet, rousing Emma from sleep. She fumbled in the dark, fingers closing around her phone and when she pulled it to her, the screen flashed a number she recognised instantly.
The call she always dreaded.
‘Hello?’
‘Is this Mrs Wilcott?’
‘Ms Wilcott,’ Emma corrected.
‘My apologies, Ms Wilcott. It’s Anastasia Thornbury from Eastgardens Aged Care. I’m sorry to ring you so late.’
‘Is my grandmother okay?’
There was a pause. ‘Mrs Wilcott, she’s gone wandering again.’
‘Again?’
‘Yes.’
‘How is that possible?’
‘My staff were doing their rounds at eleven-thirty and when they checked on her, they found her bed empty. We’ve notified the Mascot Police Station. They’re assembling a search team now.’
Emma closed her eyes. Not again.
‘Mrs Wilcott, are you still there?’
‘I’m here.’
‘If you would like to come down to the facility, I can sit with you while they search for your grandmother. I’m sure she hasn’t gone far.’
‘Yes, of course. I’ll be right there.’
‘I’ll see you soon, Mrs Wilcott.’
‘Ms Wilcott,’ Emma said, but the line had already gone dead.
Emma climbed out of bed and changed into jeans and a jumper, pulling uncombed hair into a ponytail. The night was cold and she felt it on her face the moment she stepped out of her apartment block. The road was slick with water and a veil of rain floated from the sky to blanket everything below.
As her car grumbled to life, she tried not to think of Gwendoline roaming the dark, wet streets alone. This wasn’t the first time her grandmother had gone wandering. She was prone to it. It was often at night and right under the noses of the staff whose duty it was to care for her.
‘For someone with dementia, she can be as cunning as a spy,’ Anastasia Thornbury, the facility director, often remarked, as though Gwendoline made the conscious decision to purposely sneak off. Emma never knew how to take the forthright Ms Thornbury. She had wanted to say numerous times that it wasn’t Gwendoline’s cunning ability that outsmarted her carers, but perhaps their own inability to do their job properly. But she always bit her tongue.
Emma navigated her small, protesting VW away from her Kensington apartment block and onto ANZAC Parade. Traffic was light and she was carried easily to Bunnerong Road, then to Wentworth Avenue, where she turned into a quiet tree-lined street in Eastgardens. The rain was still falling, light drops fluttering onto her eyelashes as she stepped out of her car.
She locked the car door and crossed the road to Eastgardens Aged Care, a small complex of beige buildings with grey-tiled roofs and neatly trimmed hedges. It was the place she’d made the heartbreaking decision to admit her grandmother two years earlier when she’d been diagnosed with moderate cognitive decline.
It was a decision she’d struggled with ever since. Gwendoline was all that Emma had in the world. Placing her into permanent care had felt like a betrayal, a failure on her part to care for the one person who had cared for her when her world had fallen to pieces.
But simple moments of forgetfulness had developed into larger gaps in Gwendoline’s memory. Numerous times she’d left the gas stove burning when Emma was at work, or the bathtub running, which almost flooded the apartment.
When Gwendoline had disappeared for an entire day, finally tracked down in bushland in La Perouse, Emma knew something had to be done. Quitting her job was not an option. She had to support them and full-time carers—even part-time—were expensive and not something she could afford. It was with a heavy heart that she decided to relocate Gwendoline to the nursing home.
But Gwendoline had started wandering frequently from there too and Emma worried that one day, she wouldn’t come back to her. One day she would slip and fall, hit her head or drown in the nearby bays. One day, it would happen—the unthinkable—and panic seized Emma the way it always did when she was called to the facility in the middle of the night.
She shrugged off the dark thoughts and hurried through the main doors. Anastasia Thornbury was waiting in the foyer and came quickly to greet her. She was dressed impeccably in a navy blue suit and heels. Her dark hair was sleek and short, he
r face perfectly painted on as though she hadn’t too, been fast asleep when the nurse raised the alarm.
She shook Emma’s hand. ‘Mrs Wilcott, thank you for coming.’
‘It’s Ms Wilcott,’ Emma said, smoothing down her messy ponytail.
‘Of course. I was just about to call you.’
‘Have they found her?’
‘Yes. Come into my office and we’ll talk.’
Emma scrawled her signature in the visitors’ book and followed Anastasia into her office. She took a seat in front of the large oak desk. ‘Is my grandmother okay?’
Anastasia sat too, in a dark brown leather chair. She leant backwards, pressing her fingertips together. ‘I’ve been told she’s fine. The ambulance is at the scene now, assessing her. If she’s okay, they’ll transport her back here.’
The sweetest feeling of relief washed over Emma. ‘Where did they find her?’
‘Remarkably, she was all the way over on Foreshore Road. It’s quite a hike from here, about an hour’s walk. She was just wandering, which is a dangerous thing to do on a busy road like Foreshore. She could have been hit by a car. She seems to be drawn to the water each time.’
‘How did this happen? Why weren’t your staff watching her?’
Anastasia Thornbury’s back stiffened. ‘Mrs Wilcott, our nurses are extremely busy. We’re not paid by you to provide dedicated care. It really is up to the patient to remain in her bed at night. It appears that Gwendoline takes advantage of our trust and slips out the door when no one is watching.’
‘How can a one-hundred-year-old woman with dementia take advantage of that?’ Emma asked pointedly.
Anastasia’s eyebrows lifted before she quickly set them back in place. ‘I apologise, Mrs Wilcott. I didn’t mean to suggest…’ She pursed her lips and waved her hand. ‘In any case, when Gwendoline wanders from the facility, it is deeply upsetting for my staff. We’re terribly saddened that this has happened again.’
Emma sighed at the response she’d heard countless times before. Anastasia was an expert at shifting blame and Emma felt helpless to challenge her. She needed this facility. Aged care was expensive in Sydney and Emma managed the expenses solely from her dwindling inheritance and Gwendoline’s meagre pension fund. The facility in Eastgardens was affordable, close to home and Gwendoline was settled there. She had few other options at her disposal.
The director cleared her throat, seemingly eager to steer the conversation back into neutral territory. ‘Mrs Wilcott, your grandmother has been unsettled of late. That’s not uncommon in patients with moderate cognitive decline. The syndrome targets short-term memory first and can leave them confused with simple daily tasks. But in some cases, if the long-term memory is still unaffected, sufferers will go in search of those memories for comfort. These wanderings, in particular, seem to be related to Gwendoline’s childhood. I think she’s revisiting something.’
Emma sat forward, intrigued. ‘Okay.’
‘Sometimes we ask Gwendoline after these incidents what she was looking for. The response is always the same.’
‘Which is?’
‘That she’s going to the wharf to look for the boat.’
‘The boat?’
‘Yes. Does that make any sense to you?’
‘My grandmother was born on the Quarantine Station in Manly in 1919. Her mother worked there and Gwendoline lived there until she was seven. Perhaps she’s looking for the boats that used to come ashore with the sick.’
‘It’s possible, though it’s never boats as in plural. She seems to be looking for a particular boat.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m really not too sure.’
‘I have a suggestion,’ Anastasia said.
‘Please.’
‘Does Gwendoline have any old photographs, letters or diaries from her time at the Quarantine Station that you could bring here? I feel that if you could show her these items or read to her from them, she may feel comforted and less inclined to go wandering.’
Despite Emma’s feelings towards Anastasia Thornbury and the level of security offered at the facility, she had to admit it was a good idea. She was willing to try anything at that point. ‘I’ve lived with my grandmother since I was fifteen. I don’t recall seeing anything like that from the Quarantine Station. All her belongings are in storage now, but I can go through them again.’
‘I think it’s worth a try.’
‘I’ll do it first thing in the morning.’
Anastasia’s phone tinged and she glanced at it. ‘Great news, the ambulance has arrived. Your grandmother is here.’
They both stood and Anastasia walked around the desk to shake Emma’s hand. ‘I’m glad we could have this chat. I do hope we can resolve this matter once and for all.’
Emma shook her hand and followed Anastasia and her tremendously tall heels back out to the foyer.
‘They’ll transport Gwendoline through the back doors so you can wait in her room if you like. I’ll bring her to you.’
Emma thanked her and walked down the north corridor of the facility to Gwendoline’s room. The door was open and she let herself in, turning a lamp on.
It was small and minimalistic; the same room Gwendoline had been in since she was admitted two years before. The carpet was thin and blue, the walls sterile white. A window overlooked the carpark at the back of the complex and Emma could see the ambulance lights bouncing off the buildings in the dark.
Over the years she had tried to make the room homely, bringing familiar items from Gwendoline’s life to fill it with—paintings from her walls, her own reading lamp and frilly doilies to dress the surfaces. Still, that little room in the north wing of that nursing facility would never be Gwendoline’s home. She belonged with Emma and she felt a familiar twinge of guilt over it.
As she waited for Gwendoline to arrive she tidied up the room, sorting laundry and preparing a clean nightgown for her. She straightened the items on the bedside table—a vase of red roses—Gwendoline’s favourite flower—and a framed photograph of Emma’s family. She picked it up and gave the glass a fond wipe with her sleeve before setting it back down front and centre on the table.
The bed was unmade; Gwendoline’s indent still visible on the sheets. There was a tattered old book on her pillow, one that Emma had seen many times before—Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Emma picked up the book and turned it over in her hands. Her grandmother had been reading the same story for years, further evidence of her gradual mental decline. Emma swallowed back a sob.
Gwendoline was a hundred years old. She had made it to a century; a worthy milestone, but there wasn’t much time left. Her condition would eventually deteriorate, developing into Alzheimer’s, and she would forget how to speak, how to eat. Her psychomotor skills would be lost and she would die. There was no cure and little treatment available. Gwendoline would be gone and Emma would be alone in the world.
There was a knock on the door and she turned.
‘Look who we have here,’ trilled Anastasia proudly, as though she had found Gwendoline herself.
Gwendoline, small and curved in the back, lifted herself from the wheelchair. Her white hair looked like a compact nest and she had on a wet nightgown and a pair of muddy slippers.
‘Grandma,’ Emma said, dropping Pride and Prejudice onto the bedside table and reaching for her, wrapping her arms gently around her. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Catherine, dear, you came to see me.’
The statement gave Emma pause. ‘No Grandma, it’s Emma. Catherine’s… not here.’
Gwendoline squinted at her. ‘Oh Emma, it is you. How silly of me.’
‘Come sit down, Grandma.’ Emma helped Gwendoline to the bed. She looked exhausted from an hour of walking in the rain.
‘They gave her an IV for fluids in the ambulance,’ Anastasia explained, ‘but otherwise she’s fine. She’ll need a good night sleep and the doctor will examine her in the morning.’
‘Thank you. Can I stay w
ith her a while?’
‘Just sign out when you’re done.’ Anastasia closed the door to Gwendoline’s room and Emma could hear the sound of her heels retreating down the corridor.
‘Grandma.’ Emma sat on the bed beside her and held her hand. It felt frail and bony in Emma’s youthful grip. ‘Why did you leave the facility again? You know you can’t go walking away like that.’
‘I was trying to find it,’ Gwendoline said.
‘Find what?’
Emma watched her grandmother closely, but a veil of confusion had settled between them. On one side, there was Emma and Eastgardens Aged Care and on the other, there was Gwendoline, stuck somewhere in the vast well of her memories.
‘I wanted him to come back. I had to ask him…’ Her words trailed off into mutters and Emma couldn’t understand who or what Gwendoline had been trying to find. She wasn’t sure she knew either.
‘Grandma, do you have any old photographs or letters from your time at the Quarantine Station? Is there something I can bring to you that we could read together?’
Gwendoline looked at her with refocusing eyes. ‘I don’t think so, dear. We left the station in a hurry with one small suitcase between the three of us. Most things we left behind.’ Her eyes strayed to the Jane Austen book then she slipped again from the present, muttering something about a boat.
‘You’re tired, Grandma. Let me help you into bed.’ Emma removed Gwendoline’s wet slippers and nightgown, changed her into a clean one and helped her under the covers. She sat and stroked her hand until Gwendoline drifted to sleep.
The sky was turning pink outside; a new day was upon them. As Emma watched over her grandmother, tucked safely away in peaceful slumber, her heart ached for a woman who was finding it increasingly difficult to tell memory from reality, whose body was at the end of its time.
‘I’m not ready for you to leave me too,’ she whispered as her grandmother slept. ‘Please stay a little longer. Stay until I can find out what you’re searching for.’
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